questions on PhanTango 'merger' - long-term vision

[Lutger]

Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
..
> Why would anyone use any amount of time and effort to keep Tango code in
> Phobos synced with the original in Tango, when all you need to do is
> download Tango in addition to Phobos? Having some modules from Tango in
> Phobos, then downloading Tango (because you may also want to use some
> higher level features) could then result in breakage if Tango contains
> unsynced changes to the stuff in Phobos (note that this don't have to be
> public API changes if there are any kind of dependencies between Tango
> modules in Phobos). There are also other issues with such a setup related
> to mantainance, bugfixing and support in general for the code
> 
> So in my view, any kind of merger is first (and possibly only) about runtime
> compatibility. If one is to merge everything in some way, it may, for
> mantainance reasons (less core functionality to mantain, but a lot of work
> to do the initial wrap), make sense to build one of the API's on top of the
> other. Building for instance Tango IO on top of Phobos don't make sense
> though (at least to me), as it would degrade performance. Doing the
> opposite, would probably create other subtle differences due to Phobos' IO
> going via the C runtime.  

I agree with this stance. To make it explicit, I think compatibility is 
first and foremost needed to enable Tango users to link to Phobos 
libraries and vice versa (imo). To me, the most minimal to make this 
possible is also the most desirable. Granted, tangobos can be used for 
this purpose, though a more formal solution in the long run might 
inspire more confidence.

Not really on topic, but related: it would be nice for Phobos to be 
enriched with whatever improvements Tango have made to important parts 
such as the runtime design and the threads implementation.